I grew up in Dullstroom South Africa and I started fly fishing at around 9 years old.

We moved to Pretoria and most of the fly fishing stopped for a long time.

Yesterday the opportunity yesterday to visit old family friends. The farmer allowed me to fish his dam again. 1st time in 13 years.

Very very few people are allowed to fish here so I was really privilege to cast a fly here once again.

My biggest trout I caught here as a boy on fly was 2,25kg...

The dam is situated at 6800ft.









I loaded the float tube and targeted deep water most of the day as the water is warm this time of year and I had to drive back to Pretoria in the evening so could not stay for the late afternoon early evening session.

The dam was stocked a couple of months ago with about 50kg of 500g trout and earlier in the year with 1 - 2.5kg trout.

The big trout in this dam is wild as wild can get and they fight very hard.

Unfortunately the wind blew the whole day that made things a bit interesting but I had a lot of fun going back to my roots...















I caught 8 x 500 gr trout and had a lot of fun...

thought you might enjoy these pictures. these are 2 of several dozen i caught on a friend's farm near Wakkerstroom. these are part of a South African version of a Scottish "McNabb". i didn't know what a McNabb was until my friend's wife explained it is shooting a game animal( in my case a mountain reedbuck), a fowl(a guinea fowl) and catching a trout all in the same day.

here is the reedbuck and the guineas

Congrats.

Very nice brown trout.

It does not happen often to be able to complete a McNab.

Everything needs to go perfect to complete it.

I will try for one with the bow this coming winter.

Trout will be caught on fly but the shooting will be done with the bow...

Congrats on a fine day fishing.

From the looks of that Brown Trout, the pond/lake is short of food for the fish.

If there are any government or private pond specialists he can contact locally it might pay for them to have a look-see. They may agree and make recommendations or disagree with my long distance diagnosis.

quote:

Originally posted by TCLouis:
Congrats on a fine day fishing.

From the looks of that Brown Trout, the pond/lake is short of food for the fish.

If there are any government or private pond specialists he can contact locally it might pay for them to have a look-see. They may agree and make recommendations or disagree with my long distance diagnosis.

Not in South Africa that I am aware off.

The fish gets stock as small fish of 250g normally and they have then to fend for them selfs.

Trout is a exotic species in South Africa. Introduced in the late 1800's...

If there is some local species of small fish/minnow and/or some specie of freshwater shrimp he can also stock in the pond it may make it even better fishing.

Reviewing the pictures once again the rainbow seems to be well fed, only the brown seems underfed.

Looks like you had FUN and that is all that counts, anyway!

both trout came from the same dam. i caught 8-10 browns and an equal number of rainbows. all the browns were thin and all the rainbows were fat- and all were 1-2 kilos. the farm had 12 dams and all had been stocked years ago for a put and take fishery. my friend had recently acquired the property and it had not been fished in 5 or 6 years. i lost a few larger fish( using 1 kilo tippet) in the shoreline weeds.

Yes, some fresh water shrimp would put some pounds on those browns!